


The Good Die Young

by Natterina



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Drama, F/M, Romance, Sad, Sorry Not Sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 23:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4764947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natterina/pseuds/Natterina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time she willingly comes to him in the fade since the fall of Corypheus is also the last. The year is 9:45.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good Die Young

The first time she willingly comes to him in the fade since the fall of Corypheus is also the last.

The year is 9:45.

Lavellan had found many intricate ways to stop him from entering her dreams in the fade after she realised the wolf that stalked her was Fen’Harel. Solas has tried, many times, to break through and find her, but his attempts have been unsuccessful. The few times he managed to get through, to talk to her and give her the answers she had  _pleaded_ for that first fade visit, she had found a way to force herself awake and violently expel him from her mind. She would patch up each hole he had broken through, and he would have to create another.

Now, he spends his days searching, tirelessly so, and gathering his strength. He is far past full strength, but he needs to be stronger, better, in order to succeed in his plan regarding the old gods. His success is only weeks away.

It is when he is slumbering in the ruins of a castle, inhabitants long dead and battered by an Archdemon sometime during the second blight, that he notices all the walls are gone. (And he is so tantalisingly close to the Inquisition stronghold, so close to  _her_  and the people he once called friends that his chest aches with a feeling he refuses to acknowledge.)

Curious, Solas makes his way into her dreams with no obstacle to stop him, and it is as easy as it once was, when she loved him dearly and let him in eagerly. The world she has constructed is merely the grounds of Skyhold, only empty and quiet despite the burning midday sun and the oddly warm wind.

Lavellan stands nearby, under the shade of the tree that looked over the lowest level of the keep, where the trade stands usually bustled with soldiers and vendors. Her arms are crossed loosely over her chest, and she wears the warm dark leather coat and armour that he had become so accustomed to seeing her in. He approaches with the fabled silence of the Dread Wolf, but judging by the slight inclination of her head in his direction, she is fully aware of his presence.

Solas stops beside her and dares a glance at her bare face. It is odd; when he thinks of her he usually remembers the vallaslin that he had removed, so to see her bare faced and next to him is an oddity he is not accustomed to. She had spent their final few weeks avoiding him.  There is a thin scar that runs diagonally across her left cheek, the one closest to him, and underneath that is a patch of scar tissue the width and length of his thumb.

He watches her for a moment longer, watches her resist the urge that tells her to look at him. She stares hard at the land below her, but her jaw is clenched tightly and he can see the defiant pursing of her lips that he had often kissed away during her periods of stubbornness.

Clasping his hands behind his back and standing tall, he follows her line of sight and ponders before speaking.

“I was not expecting you to ever raise that barrier.”

Her eyes flicker in his direction momentarily with a blink before settling on the barracks in the distance.

“I wanted to see you. I needed to…forgive you.” Her voice is flat, suppressing an anger and sorrow that she does not wish him to hear. He turns his head to look at her as the wind blows around their legs. Her coattail flaps in the wind.

“Can you?” He is genuinely curious. He had hoped she would find it in her heart to forgive him, hoped she would pull that barrier down so he could explain without having to return to Skyhold.

A broken smile graces her face, whilst still not looking at him, which pulls an aching string in his heart.

“I don’t have a choice.” Her voice is quiet in a way Lavellan never was, never should be. “I could never have moved on. I got over you, felt the achievement when I realised I hadn’t thought of you in  _months_ , but I never moved on. My heart speeds up even now. I still love you, despite it all.” Her laugh is bitter, tainted with the shards of a broken heart that pierce him just as sharply.

He stays quiet, knowing she wants to say more. Seconds pass, before Lavellan turns fully to face him. He matches her movement, looking down on her properly for the first time in years.

“Did you ever truly love me?”

He does not waste time hesitating in his reply.

“I always did, vhenan. And I fear I shall never stop. But it was easier, kinder, to avoid your involvement in this.”

The look that crosses her face is unnerving: it is one of perfect understanding. Lavellan wears the same look he did all those years ago, when making a sudden hard decision to protect the other. Her smile is small.

“That was all I needed to know, truly.” There is a pain behind her eyes, one of exquisite agony that is physical and permeates her soul. Her teeth clench. “Goodbye, Fen’Harel.” The look on her face brings alarm to the forefront of his emotions.

“Vhenan…” Before he can say anymore he is violently pushed out, only this time it is  _different_. Lavellan has not pushed him out on purpose; something has made her wake up and he knows it was something  _painful_. Her face had twisted up in agony before everything disappeared.

Solas jerks awake with a fear he cannot place running through his blood. It is a fear of the total unknown; he feels just like he did that fateful day he locked the Eluvian and fled the crossroads with his foci, leaving his people to the unknown consequences of his actions.

The next night when he lays down to sleep in a copse of trees, he reaches out to find her. Instead of the magical barrier he had become used to, or the natural barrier that would indicate she was conscious, he cannot find her at all.

 

* * *

 

He reaches Skyhold a week later, after reverting to four legs and moving as fast as the wolf can physically move. He reaches the strong, sturdy fortress with her tall proud walls and slips silently back to his elven nature.

 He nearly expels the contents of his stomach when he sees the singular, raised black flag.

It flutters in the wind high above the keep, proclaiming to the world the grief the fortress suffers. No one notices the lone elf as he makes his way to that tree where Lavellan had stood in her dreams. There had been many who arrived at the keep to express their sorrow, and a lone elf is hardly suspicious. Desperate for answers, hoping beyond all reason that the flag is for someone else,  _anyone_ else. Solas throws up half-hearted distraction and protection wards around the small area so no one can see him, and sits with the panic of a desperate man.

The fade latches on to the emotion surrounding the entire keep from all of its inhabitants, the strongest the place has ever felt, and Solas finds himself watching a suddenly-busy courtyard. It is fuzzy with the edges of the fade, but there is no mistaking the urgency with which the impenetrable doors to the keep are opened.

He wanders closer, blending among a crowd that cannot see him as Cassandra rushes through the gates, her armour burnt and coloured with soot. Behind her Iron Bull follows, covered in bruises and painful looking wounds, with an unknown mage closely behind him. It takes Solas a moment to realise that Bull is not carrying heat-warped metal in his arms but  _Lavellan_ , broken and bloody and unconscious.

The scene changes at his will as he moves indoors, follows the memories to the Inquisitor’s quarters and watches as a fever-struck Lavellan screams his name and writhes in the bed whilst a healer tries to stitch up a gaping wound on her abdomen, and an injured Cassandra tries to pry the leather coat off the places where heat has fused leather and skin.

Solas watches, and listens as a healer tells Cullen they have no one currently in the keep to deal with such injuries, that their closest agent able to help is over a week away, listens as they say Lavellan will not survive that long with her injuries. Listens to the broken whisper of “it took too damn long to bring her back to Skyhold” that Cullen hisses under his breath.

He listens as Bull recounts to Cullen the dragon breathing fire in her direction before snatching up her small body in its jaws and throwing her around like a ragdoll. Listens to the nameless human mage recount how she tried, desperately, to heal up as many injuries as she could but the wounds from the dragon’s teeth were too deep and bleeding too much to close up with her minimal healing skills.

Solas listens to Dorian explain that the reason she will not wake up is because she is too deep in the fade, likely trying to find  _him_. Listens to him tell Cassandra to force her awake as gently as she can.

Solas pulls himself away and out of the memories with his emotions in tatters. His breathing is laboured; he clasps his hands together in front of his lips and breathes hard into them, trying to control his emotions. Trying to stop the pain from showing on his face, he furrows his eyebrows only slightly and continues trying to control his ragged breathing.

He does not sob. His tears are silent and few, for it is has never been his way to be outwardly emotional. He cannot express the pain that tears through him, that rips him in half each time he remembers the broken screech that left Lavellan’s lips as she lay dying in that bed. The pain that breaks him when he realises she had let him into her dreams, had chosen not to tell him the truth but to  _forgive_ him for selfishly breaking her heart.

What if he hadn’t left? What if he had  _returned_ , had been there at Skyhold when she was brought back? He might have had just enough healing experience to keep her alive, could have comforted her in her final hours…

Solas leaves Skyhold with the heart of a desperate, broken man. He can think of nothing but the wasted time. It does not seem possible, he cannot unite the idea with his mind that Lavellan, that bright spark who had wormed her way into his heart so  _easily_ , is gone. He will never see  _her_  again, can only rely on the memory of old conversations and faded touches if he ever thinks of her.

If anyone in Skyhold hears the long, mournful howls of the wolf that night, they are too deep in grief to take much notice of it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry.
> 
> Moving everything over from my tumblr to here.


End file.
